A Zulu soldier tells his part in the Battle of Isandlwana

Early in 1929, two reporters from The Natal Mercury interviewed a number of Zulu survivors of the battle of Isandlwana. One of them was Kumbeka Gwabe of the uMcijo ibutho, who had been born beyond Nongoma in northern Zululand, and who had been in the prime of his manhood in 1879 when he had been summoned to join the army collecting at oNdini. This is how he remembered the Isandlwana campaign.

We left oNdini and went through Mahlabathini across the White Mfolozi up to Babanango, and then on to Nquthu, where, in the distance, we could see the white tents of the white man at Isandlwana …That night [21 January 1879] some of the enemy’s scouts saw us and shot at us. We put out our fires and waited in the darkness for the morning. All of us had two or more assegais [spears] and a small shield, and some also had muzzle-loaders which had been issued to them by Cetshwayo, who got large numbers from the Portuguese …

 Just after the sun came up … we crept towards the white men’s tents. We crawled along the grass with the white men shooting at us until we got within assegai throw of them. Then we rose and the white men did the same. A lot of our men had been shot down by the enemy as we were crawling though the grass and we had no more ammunition, so we then rushed and started to fight them hand-to-hand with our assegais, the white men pulling out their revolvers and bayonets …

 The fighting … was so fierce that only a very small handful of the white men got away fro us over the Buffalo [Mzinyathi] river. We spared no lives and did not ask for any mercy for ourselves. We killed every white man left in the camp and the horses and cattle too. After killing them we used to split them up the stomach so that their bodies would not swell.

 We took the white men’s rifles and tents, after cutting them up into convenient lengths … We left the wagons … Among our people who had been killed was our leader Mkhosana [kaMvundlana, chief of the Biyela and induna of the uMcijo] whose face we covered with a shield until the relations of our dead came and took their bodies away after the battle and also took the wounded home. The dead of the white people we left where they had fallen and some time afterwards they were buried …

 That evening when everything was over and quiet we went back to the donga [the Ngwebeni valley] and slept there. The next morning we went back to Mahlabathini … Cetshwayo thanked us for what we had done at Isandlwana. “But,” he said, “if you think you have finished all the white men you are wrong, because they are still coming.” Then we began to sing his praises and told him we had thrown away the white man … We were then told that we could go home …

 At Isandlwana I myself only killed one man. Dum! Dum! went his revolver as he was firing from right to left, and I came along beside him and stuck my assegai under his right arm, pushing it through his body until it came out and slit his stomach so that I knew that he would not shoot any more of my people.

[from the Supplement to The Natal Mercury, 22 January 1929]